Manvir Singh is an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of California, Davis. He graduated with a PhD from Harvard in 2020 and has research interests in shamanism, witchcraft, story, music, and justice. Since 2014, he has conducted long-term ethnographic fieldwork with Mentawai people (Siberut Island, Indonesia) and, more recently, has begun to study psychoactive drug use in Colombia. His academic publications have appeared in journals such as Science, PNAS, Current Biology, and Nature Human Behaviour, while he has written on indigeneity, evolution, and deep history for The New Yorker, Wired, and The Guardian, among other outlets. He is currently writing a book on shamanism.

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Standing at the nexus of a social justice movement demanding increased recognition for indigenous people and a vogue for all things natural, ancient, and ecologically-attuned, increasing numbers of people are seeking psychedelic experiences under the care of lineage-holding shamans, or ceremonies influenced by indigenous traditions.

However, the history and present of these traditions and practitioners are often more complex and dynamic than portrayed. The politics of indigenous communities, and even the concept of indigenaity itself, can also present unexpected puzzles.

In this session, we will explore the hard questions raised by interactions between indigenous communities with shamanic traditions, and the seekers of authenticity arriving on their doorstep.